Sickbeard fails to start. "Unable to write PID file" [Solved]

Question

I've installed sickbeard from the AUR but can't seem to get it started.
when running "sudo systemctl start sickbeard.service" I get the following output:
Job for sickbeard.service failed. See 'systemctl status sickbeard.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
'systemctl status sickbeard.service' provides:
sickbeard.service - SickBeard daemon
      Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/sickbeard.service; disabled)
      Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2013-02-23 14:49:19 CST; 1min 4s ago
     Process: 11518 ExecStart=/usr/bin/sickbeard --nolaunch --daemon --quiet --config $SB_CONF --datadir $SB_DATA --port $SB_PORT --pidfile=/run/sickbeard/sickbeard-8081.pid (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Feb 23 14:49:18 arch systemd[1]: Starting SickBeard daemon...
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch sickbeard[11518]: Unable to write PID file: No such file or directory [2]
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: sickbeard.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: Failed to start SickBeard daemon.
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: Unit sickbeard.service entered failed state
And it looks like 'journalctl -xn' provides about the same info:
-- Logs begin at Tue 2013-01-08 17:25:44 CST, end at Sat 2013-02-23 14:53:29 CST. --
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch sickbeard[11518]: Unable to write PID file: No such file or directory [2]
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: sickbeard.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: Failed to start SickBeard daemon.
-- Subject: Unit sickbeard.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/li … temd-devel
-- Documentation: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar … e9d022f03d
-- Unit sickbeard.service has failed.
-- The result is failed.
Feb 23 14:49:19 arch systemd[1]: Unit sickbeard.service entered failed state
Also, here is the current systemd file for sickbeard, if that helps:
[Unit]
Description=SickBeard daemon
After=network.target
[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/sickbeard
User=sickbeard
Group=sickbeard
ExecStart=/usr/bin/sickbeard --nolaunch --daemon --quiet --config "$SB_CONF" --datadir "$SB_DATA" --port "$SB_PORT" --pidfile=/run/sickbeard/sickbeard-8081.pid
Type=forking
TimeoutStopSec=20
PIDFile=/run/sickbeard/sickbeard-8081.pid
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
So I guess obviously the important part is "Unable to write PID file: No such file or directory [2]", but I'm not really sure what that means or how to fix it. I've played around with the PIDfile configuration for the systemd service (tried renaming from sickbeard to sickbeard-8081) but I always get the same error.
Any ideas?
Edit: Solved by teekay
Last edited by spurious_access (2013-02-24 08:09:01)

Answer 1

The sabnzbd systemd unit file doesn't use a pidfile. Not sure why. It would make more sense there than it does for sickbeard, because IMHO sickbeard should run as the user who owns the target tv-series media folders. Using tmpfiles.d just causes a headache when you are going to update it using the AUR package.
I installed it once using sickbeard-git from AUR, changed the systemd unit file and /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/sickbeard.conf to match my user, chown -R'ed /opt/sickbeard, ran "pacman -R --dbonly sickbeard-git", and ever since use "git pull" to update. That also works directly from web interface.
Last edited by teekay (2013-02-24 08:47:42)